Astronomy

Can you believe we are in August already? Let’s hope for another sunny heatwave and some clear skies for stargazing. Read below to know what to look out for this month! Sturgeon Moon Mark your calendars! The next full Moon will grace the skies on 9th August at 8:55am (UK time). This month’s Moon is traditionally known as the Sturgeon Moon, a name rooted from North American tradition. It has also been known as the Swan Flight Moon, Red Moon and Grain Moon.   The name comes from the giant lake sturgeon, a prehistoric-looking fish that once thrived in the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. These freshwater giants were most easily caught in late summer and were a vital food source for Native American communities in the region. While once plentiful, sturgeon are now a much rarer sight due to overf...

A generative AI impression of a circumstellar disc surrounding a free floating planet. Though not bound to any star, these solitary giant planets appear to possess discs similar to the one that formed the planets around our Sun. Planets without stars may not be so lonely after all. New research led by astronomers at the University of St Andrews suggests that free-floating giant planets—those adrift in interstellar space—can host their own miniature planetary systems. Using the unparalleled infrared vision of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the team studied a sample of eight young, isolated planetary-mass objects with masses five to ten times that of Jupiter. Though not bound to any star, these solitary giants appear to possess dusty circumplanetary discs—structures similar to the o...

Exploding stars come in different types, and these different types of supernovae show astronomers different things about the cosmos. There's a scientific appetite to find more of them and boost our knowledge about these exotic events. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope should be able to feed that appetite. The Roman is due to launch in about two years, and will make its way to its station at the Sun-Earth L2 orbit. After commissioning, it'll begin operations. One of its three primary surveys is the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey. In that survey, the powerful space telescope will image the same section of sky beyond the Milky Way every five days for two years. The team behind the Roman will stitch these scenes together into one comprehensive movie, a sort of cosmic cinema. T...

Armagh Observatory and Planetarium marked a remarkable milestone this week, 230 years of daily weather observations, with readings taken every single day since 14 July 1795. To celebrate the occasion, the Observatory hosted a special gathering at its historic meteorological enclosure (“MET cage”) on Monday 14 July at 10 am, followed by a Family Fun Day at the Planetarium. 230 Years of Weather Recording 14 July 2025 Armagh Observatory and Planetarium Armagh CREDIT: LiamMcArdle.com Meteorological measurements at Armagh began in December 1794, with an unbroken sequence of daily weather readings starting in July 1795, making this one of the longest continuous climate records in the British Isles. “Reaching 230 years of uninterrupted weather records is an extraordinary achievement,” said Dr Ker...